Bandera's Bride. Mary Mcbride
Christian name. May I? John?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
She tossed her gloves on the bed. “Good.” Then she started plucking the pins from her prim little hat. “You’ll think this strange perhaps, John,” she said, “but this place, The Crippled B, feels more like my home in many ways than Mississippi ever did.”
John didn’t respond. He was already on his way out of the room, hurrying, fleeing, before his Emmy pulled the last pin loose and uncovered all those glorious golden curls.
Exhausted as she was, Emily lay awake for a long time that night in the housekeeper’s narrow bed with its starched muslin sheets and ancient, threadbare quilt. She tried with all her might to think about Price, but her mind kept returning to John Bandera. What a peculiar man he was, and not in the least as Price had described him.
She recalled one particular letter in which Price had referred to his partner as a mongrel. Emily had written back, asking for details. “His mother was a Comanche,” Price had replied. “As for his father, I assume the man was white, light-eyed, and quite tall—as John is over six feet—and the culprit was probably fleet of foot since he didn’t stick around to even witness the birth of his child.”
“Bandera’s a man of few words,” another letter had said. Having met John now, Emily thought that was an exaggeration. He was a man of fewer than few words. It was her impression this evening that speech was almost painful for him and that he was grateful for their frequent lapses into silence, and then thoroughly relieved when it came time to say good-night.
A very peculiar man. And at the same time an extraordinarily handsome man whose features seemed to blend the very best of his diverse bloodlines. His long, dark Indian hair had the merest suggestion of curl, a gift of his father no doubt, along with the amber light that glowed in his dark eyes. His features weren’t finely sculpted the way Price’s were, but rather ruggedly chiseled from brow to jaw.
He was as different from Price as night from day, and yet there had been a time or two during their meal when John had somehow reminded her of Price, not in looks but in his speech. Not that there was so much of that, but once or twice he’d used a word or turned a phrase that sounded uncannily like Price. It probably shouldn’t have surprised her, though, since the two of them had been together—in the Army and now at The Crippled B—for eight years or so. It only made sense that they would pick up each other’s habits, mannerisms, and patterns of speech.
She fell asleep finally, wondering what Price’s voice sounded like and if it was as deep as John Bandera’s and if the Mississippian she loved so well had acquired the subtle Spanish accent that made the sound of his partner’s voice so sensuous and exotic.
He may have been a man of few words, but those few were certainly like music.
Chapter Three
The Crippled B’s beautiful, but uninvited guest slept late the following morning, for which John was grateful since it gave him some additional and very necessary time to get not only his house in order, but his mind as well.
The night before, after Emily had gone to bed, John had gathered up all of her letters, along with her photograph in its hammered tin frame, then locked them away in the safe where he kept the deeds to all his property and the cash he kept on hand to meet the monthly payroll.
Right now there wasn’t anybody to pay, thank God, or to tell Emily Russell that they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Price McDaniel in three years. John decided that he didn’t have much cause to worry about Señora Fuentes or her daughter, Lupe, since neither one of them spoke more than one or two words of English.
As far as he knew, Emily’s knowledge of Spanish was limited to a few assorted words he’d written in a couple of his letters to her. Besides, Price had left long before John had hired the housekeeper. As far as he knew, Señora Fuentes and her daughter didn’t even know his missing partner’s name.
It was different, though, with some of the longtime ranch hands, the ones who’d been around from the beginning of The Crippled B. Fortunately, two of the old-timers, Diego and Hector, only knew enough English to order a halfway decent meal in an Abilene cafe. But then there was Tater Latham. The lanky Kansan not only spoke English, but spoke it at such length and at such great volume that people were always telling him to shut up. Tater, when he returned, could be a problem.
The obvious solution, of course, was sending Emily back to her home in Mississippi. And during a long night with hardly any sleep, John had decided to do just that. Send the beautiful Miss Russell back to Russell County where she belonged.
But not yet.
Dios, not just yet.
Although he had fallen in love with his Emmy’s words on paper, it had only taken him moments to realize that those words had been a perfect reflection of the flesh-and-blood woman. She was as bright as she was beautiful. As kind as she was fair.
She was a lady through and through, and yet far more sensuous than he’d ever have believed with her full lips and her direct blue gaze. Her accent reminded him of Price, but his partner’s voice had been salted with sarcasm while Emily’s flowed like the sweetest clover honey.
And lady that she was, she’d given him not the slightest indication that the color of his skin offended her or his accent grated on her ears or his lack of proper parentage affected her at all. She seemed oblivious to any difference.
Last evening John had even caught himself studying her calm expression and thinking that maybe it didn’t matter to his Emmy one bit that he wasn’t a blue-eyed, fair-haired, fine-blooded gentleman like Price. But, of course, it had to matter. How could it not? Miss Emily Russell of Russell County, Mississippi, was just too kind and too polite, too much of a lady, to allow her disdain and her distaste to show.
“You’re a damned fool,” John muttered to himself. “Loco. Estupido.”
He swore again as he jerked open the center drawer of the desk, withdrawing a sheet of paper to make a list of supplies they’d be needing soon for The Crippled B. Maybe, he hoped, tallying pounds of flour and salt and chicken feed, and figuring yards of hemp rope and muslin and wire would take his mind off the woman who was sleeping nearby in Señora Fuentes’s bed.
He’d only managed to write a few items on the page when he heard her honey voice.
“Good morning, John.”
She seemed to float into the front room, her blue silk wrapper whisking about her legs and her golden hair spilling over her shoulders like warm morning sunshine. Then she stood still, staring at the desktop.
“Oh, you’re busy writing. I’m so sorry, John. I didn’t intend to interrupt you.”
“No. It’s all right. You’re not interrupting at all. I was just…”
The words stuck in his throat all of a sudden when he looked down at the list and the dark, distinctive penmanship there. Had she seen it? With a flick of his wrist, he turned the telltale paper over.
“This can wait,” he told her, putting down the pen and rising from his chair.
Emily continued to stare at the desk, though, with a wistful slant to her mouth and an odd, distracted light in her eyes.
“I was just thinking about Price,” she said almost dreamily. “I imagine this is where he sits when he composes letters, isn’t it?” She gestured to the chair John had just left.
He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
She moved forward then, reached for the steel pen he’d only just put down, and held it delicately, as if it might break from a mere touch.
“You must think me very silly to be so sentimental about an inanimate object like this. It’s just…” She clutched the pen tighter. Her eyes shone with tears. “When do you think Price will be returning from Kansas? Will it be days? Weeks?”